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PERLFAQ9(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLFAQ9(1)
NAME
perlfaq9 - Networking ($Revision: 8539 $)
DESCRIPTION
This section deals with questions related to networking, the internet, and a few on the
web.
What is the correct form of response from a CGI script?
(Alan Flavell <flavell+www AT a5.uk> answers...)
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) specifies a software interface between a program ("CGI
script") and a web server (HTTPD). It is not specific to Perl, and has its own FAQs and
tutorials, and usenet group, comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi
The CGI specification is outlined in an informational RFC: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3875
Other relevant documentation listed in: http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
These Perl FAQs very selectively cover some CGI issues. However, Perl programmers are
strongly advised to use the CGI.pm module, to take care of the details for them.
The similarity between CGI response headers (defined in the CGI specification) and HTTP
response headers (defined in the HTTP specification, RFC2616) is intentional, but can
sometimes be confusing.
The CGI specification defines two kinds of script: the "Parsed Header" script, and the
"Non Parsed Header" (NPH) script. Check your server documentation to see what it supports.
"Parsed Header" scripts are simpler in various respects. The CGI specification allows any
of the usual newline representations in the CGI response (it's the server's job to create
an accurate HTTP response based on it). So "\n" written in text mode is technically
correct, and recommended. NPH scripts are more tricky: they must put out a complete and
accurate set of HTTP transaction response headers; the HTTP specification calls for
records to be terminated with carriage-return and line-feed, i.e ASCII \015\012 written in
binary mode.
Using CGI.pm gives excellent platform independence, including EBCDIC systems. CGI.pm
selects an appropriate newline representation ($CGI::CRLF) and sets binmode as
appropriate.
My CGI script runs from the command line but not the browser. (500 Server Error)
Several things could be wrong. You can go through the "Troubleshooting Perl CGI scripts"
guide at
http://www.perl.org/troubleshooting_CGI.html
If, after that, you can demonstrate that you've read the FAQs and that your problem isn't
something simple that can be easily answered, you'll probably receive a courteous and
useful reply to your question if you post it on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi (if
it's something to do with HTTP or the CGI protocols). Questions that appear to be Perl
questions but are really CGI ones that are posted to comp.lang.perl.misc are not so well
received.
The useful FAQs, related documents, and troubleshooting guides are listed in the CGI Meta
FAQ:
http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
How can I get better error messages from a CGI program?
Use the CGI::Carp module. It replaces "warn" and "die", plus the normal Carp modules
"carp", "croak", and "confess" functions with more verbose and safer versions. It still
sends them to the normal server error log.
use CGI::Carp;
warn "This is a complaint";
die "But this one is serious";
The following use of CGI::Carp also redirects errors to a file of your choice, placed in a
BEGIN block to catch compile-time warnings as well:
BEGIN {
use CGI::Carp qw(carpout);
open(LOG, ">>/var/local/cgi-logs/mycgi-log")
or die "Unable to append to mycgi-log: $!\n";
carpout(*LOG);
}
You can even arrange for fatal errors to go back to the client browser, which is nice for
your own debugging, but might confuse the end user.
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
die "Bad error here";
Even if the error happens before you get the HTTP header out, the module will try to take
care of this to avoid the dreaded server 500 errors. Normal warnings still go out to the
server error log (or wherever you've sent them with "carpout") with the application name
and date stamp prepended.
How do I remove HTML from a string?
The most correct way (albeit not the fastest) is to use HTML::Parser from CPAN. Another
mostly correct way is to use HTML::FormatText which not only removes HTML but also
attempts to do a little simple formatting of the resulting plain text.
Many folks attempt a simple-minded regular expression approach, like "s/<.*?>//g", but
that fails in many cases because the tags may continue over line breaks, they may contain
quoted angle-brackets, or HTML comment may be present. Plus, folks forget to convert
entities--like "<" for example.
Here's one "simple-minded" approach, that works for most files:
#!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\1)*>//gs
If you want a more complete solution, see the 3-stage striphtml program in
http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/striphtml.gz .
Here are some tricky cases that you should think about when picking a solution:
<IMG SRC = "foo.gif" ALT = "A > B">
<IMG SRC = "foo.gif"
ALT = "A > B">
<!-- <A comment> -->
<script>if (a<b && a>c)</script>
<# Just data #>
<![INCLUDE CDATA [ >>>>>>>>>>>> ]]>
If HTML comments include other tags, those solutions would also break on text like this:
<!-- This section commented out.
<B>You can't see me!</B>
-->
How do I extract URLs?
You can easily extract all sorts of URLs from HTML with "HTML::SimpleLinkExtor" which
handles anchors, images, objects, frames, and many other tags that can contain a URL. If
you need anything more complex, you can create your own subclass of "HTML::LinkExtor" or
"HTML::Parser". You might even use "HTML::SimpleLinkExtor" as an example for something
specifically suited to your needs.
You can use URI::Find to extract URLs from an arbitrary text document.
Less complete solutions involving regular expressions can save you a lot of processing
time if you know that the input is simple. One solution from Tom Christiansen runs 100
times faster than most module based approaches but only extracts URLs from anchors where
the first attribute is HREF and there are no other attributes.
#!/usr/bin/perl -n00
# qxurl - tchrist AT perl.com
print "$2\n" while m{
< \s*
A \s+ HREF \s* = \s* (["']) (.*?) \1
\s* >
}gsix;
How do I download a file from the user's machine? How do I open a file on another machine?
In this case, download means to use the file upload feature of HTML forms. You allow the
web surfer to specify a file to send to your web server. To you it looks like a download,
and to the user it looks like an upload. No matter what you call it, you do it with
what's known as multipart/form-data encoding. The CGI.pm module (which comes with Perl as
part of the Standard Library) supports this in the start_multipart_form() method, which
isn't the same as the startform() method.
See the section in the CGI.pm documentation on file uploads for code examples and details.
How do I make an HTML pop-up menu with Perl?
(contributed by brian d foy)
The CGI.pm module (which comes with Perl) has functions to create the HTML form widgets.
See the CGI.pm documentation for more examples.
use CGI qw/:standard/;
print header,
start_html('Favorite Animals'),
start_form,
"What's your favorite animal? ",
popup_menu(
-name => 'animal',
-values => [ qw( Llama Alpaca Camel Ram ) ]
),
submit,
end_form,
end_html;
How do I fetch an HTML file?
One approach, if you have the lynx text-based HTML browser installed on your system, is
this:
$html_code = `lynx -source $url`;
$text_data = `lynx -dump $url`;
The libwww-perl (LWP) modules from CPAN provide a more powerful way to do this. They
don't require lynx, but like lynx, can still work through proxies:
# simplest version
use LWP::Simple;
$content = get($URL);
# or print HTML from a URL
use LWP::Simple;
getprint "http://www.linpro.no/lwp/";
# or print ASCII from HTML from a URL
# also need HTML-Tree package from CPAN
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::Parser;
use HTML::FormatText;
my ($html, $ascii);
$html = get("http://www.perl.com/");
defined $html
or die "Can't fetch HTML from http://www.perl.com/";
$ascii = HTML::FormatText->new->format(parse_html($html));
print $ascii;
How do I automate an HTML form submission?
If you are doing something complex, such as moving through many pages and forms or a web
site, you can use "WWW::Mechanize". See its documentation for all the details.
If you're submitting values using the GET method, create a URL and encode the form using
the "query_form" method:
use LWP::Simple;
use URI::URL;
my $url = url('http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod');
$url->query_form(module => 'DB_File', readme => 1);
$content = get($url);
If you're using the POST method, create your own user agent and encode the content
appropriately.
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
use LWP::UserAgent;
$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
my $req = POST 'http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod',
[ module => 'DB_File', readme => 1 ];
$content = $ua->request($req)->as_string;
How do I decode or create those %-encodings on the web?
If you are writing a CGI script, you should be using the CGI.pm module that comes with
perl, or some other equivalent module. The CGI module automatically decodes queries for
you, and provides an escape() function to handle encoding.
The best source of detailed information on URI encoding is RFC 2396. Basically, the
following substitutions do it:
s/([^\w()'*~!.-])/sprintf '%%%02x', ord $1/eg; # encode
s/%([A-Fa-f\d]{2})/chr hex $1/eg; # decode
s/%([[:xdigit:]]{2})/chr hex $1/eg; # same thing
However, you should only apply them to individual URI components, not the entire URI,
otherwise you'll lose information and generally mess things up. If that didn't explain
it, don't worry. Just go read section 2 of the RFC, it's probably the best explanation
there is.
RFC 2396 also contains a lot of other useful information, including a regexp for breaking
any arbitrary URI into components (Appendix B).
How do I redirect to another page?
Specify the complete URL of the destination (even if it is on the same server). This is
one of the two different kinds of CGI "Location:" responses which are defined in the CGI
specification for a Parsed Headers script. The other kind (an absolute URLpath) is
resolved internally to the server without any HTTP redirection. The CGI specifications do
not allow relative URLs in either case.
Use of CGI.pm is strongly recommended. This example shows redirection with a complete
URL. This redirection is handled by the web browser.
use CGI qw/:standard/;
my $url = 'http://www.cpan.org/';
print redirect($url);
This example shows a redirection with an absolute URLpath. This redirection is handled by
the local web server.
my $url = '/CPAN/index.html';
print redirect($url);
But if coded directly, it could be as follows (the final "\n" is shown separately, for
clarity), using either a complete URL or an absolute URLpath.
print "Location: $url\n"; # CGI response header
print "\n"; # end of headers
How do I put a password on my web pages?
To enable authentication for your web server, you need to configure your web server. The
configuration is different for different sorts of web servers--apache does it differently
from iPlanet which does it differently from IIS. Check your web server documentation for
the details for your particular server.
How do I edit my .htpasswd and .htgroup files with Perl?
The HTTPD::UserAdmin and HTTPD::GroupAdmin modules provide a consistent OO interface to
these files, regardless of how they're stored. Databases may be text, dbm, Berkeley DB or
any database with a DBI compatible driver. HTTPD::UserAdmin supports files used by the
"Basic" and "Digest" authentication schemes. Here's an example:
use HTTPD::UserAdmin ();
HTTPD::UserAdmin
->new(DB => "/foo/.htpasswd")
->add($username => $password);
How do I make sure users can't enter values into a form that cause my CGI script to do bad
things?
See the security references listed in the CGI Meta FAQ
http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
How do I parse a mail header?
For a quick-and-dirty solution, try this solution derived from "split" in perlfunc:
$/ = '';
$header = <MSG>;
$header =~ s/\n\s+/ /g; # merge continuation lines
%head = ( UNIX_FROM_LINE, split /^([-\w]+):\s*/m, $header );
That solution doesn't do well if, for example, you're trying to maintain all the Received
lines. A more complete approach is to use the Mail::Header module from CPAN (part of the
MailTools package).
How do I decode a CGI form?
(contributed by brian d foy)
Use the CGI.pm module that comes with Perl. It's quick, it's easy, and it actually does
quite a bit of work to ensure things happen correctly. It handles GET, POST, and HEAD
requests, multipart forms, multivalued fields, query string and message body combinations,
and many other things you probably don't want to think about.
It doesn't get much easier: the CGI module automatically parses the input and makes each
value available through the "param()" function.
use CGI qw(:standard);
my $total = param( 'price' ) + param( 'shipping' );
my @items = param( 'item' ); # multiple values, same field name
If you want an object-oriented approach, CGI.pm can do that too.
use CGI;
my $cgi = CGI->new();
my $total = $cgi->param( 'price' ) + $cgi->param( 'shipping' );
my @items = $cgi->param( 'item' );
You might also try CGI::Minimal which is a lightweight version of the same thing. Other
CGI::* modules on CPAN might work better for you, too.
Many people try to write their own decoder (or copy one from another program) and then run
into one of the many "gotchas" of the task. It's much easier and less hassle to use
CGI.pm.
How do I check a valid mail address?
(partly contributed by Aaron Sherman)
This isn't as simple a question as it sounds. There are two parts:
a) How do I verify that an email address is correctly formatted?
b) How do I verify that an email address targets a valid recipient?
Without sending mail to the address and seeing whether there's a human on the other end to
answer you, you cannot fully answer part b, but either the "Email::Valid" or the
"RFC::RFC822::Address" module will do both part a and part b as far as you can in real-
time.
If you want to just check part a to see that the address is valid according to the mail
header standard with a simple regular expression, you can have problems, because there are
deliverable addresses that aren't RFC-2822 (the latest mail header standard) compliant,
and addresses that aren't deliverable which, are compliant. However, the following will
match valid RFC-2822 addresses that do not have comments, folding whitespace, or any other
obsolete or non-essential elements. This just matches the address itself:
my $atom = qr{[a-zA-Z0-9_!#\$\%&'*+/=?\^`{}~|\-]+};
my $dot_atom = qr{$atom(?:\.$atom)*};
my $quoted = qr{"(?:\\[^\r\n]|[^\\"])*"};
my $local = qr{(?:$dot_atom|$quoted)};
my $domain_lit = qr{\[(?:\\\S|[\x21-\x5a\x5e-\x7e])*\]};
my $domain = qr{(?:$dot_atom|$domain_lit)};
my $addr_spec = qr{$local\@$domain};
Just match an address against "/^${addr_spec}$/" to see if it follows the RFC2822
specification. However, because it is impossible to be sure that such a correctly formed
address is actually the correct way to reach a particular person or even has a mailbox
associated with it, you must be very careful about how you use this.
Our best advice for verifying a person's mail address is to have them enter their address
twice, just as you normally do to change a password. This usually weeds out typos. If both
versions match, send mail to that address with a personal message. If you get the message
back and they've followed your directions, you can be reasonably assured that it's real.
A related strategy that's less open to forgery is to give them a PIN (personal ID number).
Record the address and PIN (best that it be a random one) for later processing. In the
mail you send, ask them to include the PIN in their reply. But if it bounces, or the
message is included via a "vacation" script, it'll be there anyway. So it's best to ask
them to mail back a slight alteration of the PIN, such as with the characters reversed,
one added or subtracted to each digit, etc.
How do I decode a MIME/BASE64 string?
The MIME-Base64 package (available from CPAN) handles this as well as the MIME/QP
encoding. Decoding BASE64 becomes as simple as:
use MIME::Base64;
$decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
The MIME-Tools package (available from CPAN) supports extraction with decoding of BASE64
encoded attachments and content directly from email messages.
If the string to decode is short (less than 84 bytes long) a more direct approach is to
use the unpack() function's "u" format after minor transliterations:
tr#A-Za-z0-9+/##cd; # remove non-base64 chars
tr#A-Za-z0-9+/# -_#; # convert to uuencoded format
$len = pack("c", 32 + 0.75*length); # compute length byte
print unpack("u", $len . $_); # uudecode and print
How do I return the user's mail address?
On systems that support getpwuid, the $< variable, and the Sys::Hostname module (which is
part of the standard perl distribution), you can probably try using something like this:
use Sys::Hostname;
$address = sprintf('%s@%s', scalar getpwuid($<), hostname);
Company policies on mail address can mean that this generates addresses that the company's
mail system will not accept, so you should ask for users' mail addresses when this
matters. Furthermore, not all systems on which Perl runs are so forthcoming with this
information as is Unix.
The Mail::Util module from CPAN (part of the MailTools package) provides a mailaddress()
function that tries to guess the mail address of the user. It makes a more intelligent
guess than the code above, using information given when the module was installed, but it
could still be incorrect. Again, the best way is often just to ask the user.
How do I send mail?
Use the "sendmail" program directly:
open(SENDMAIL, "|/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t -odq")
or die "Can't fork for sendmail: $!\n";
print SENDMAIL <<"EOF";
From: User Originating Mail <me\@host>
To: Final Destination <you\@otherhost>
Subject: A relevant subject line
Body of the message goes here after the blank line
in as many lines as you like.
EOF
close(SENDMAIL) or warn "sendmail didn't close nicely";
The -oi option prevents sendmail from interpreting a line consisting of a single dot as
"end of message". The -t option says to use the headers to decide who to send the message
to, and -odq says to put the message into the queue. This last option means your message
won't be immediately delivered, so leave it out if you want immediate delivery.
Alternate, less convenient approaches include calling mail (sometimes called mailx)
directly or simply opening up port 25 have having an intimate conversation between just
you and the remote SMTP daemon, probably sendmail.
Or you might be able use the CPAN module Mail::Mailer:
use Mail::Mailer;
$mailer = Mail::Mailer->new();
$mailer->open({ From => $from_address,
To => $to_address,
Subject => $subject,
})
or die "Can't open: $!\n";
print $mailer $body;
$mailer->close();
The Mail::Internet module uses Net::SMTP which is less Unix-centric than Mail::Mailer, but
less reliable. Avoid raw SMTP commands. There are many reasons to use a mail transport
agent like sendmail. These include queuing, MX records, and security.
How do I use MIME to make an attachment to a mail message?
This answer is extracted directly from the MIME::Lite documentation. Create a multipart
message (i.e., one with attachments).
use MIME::Lite;
### Create a new multipart message:
$msg = MIME::Lite->new(
From =>'me AT myhost.com',
To =>'you AT yourhost.com',
Cc =>'some AT other.com, some AT more.com',
Subject =>'A message with 2 parts...',
Type =>'multipart/mixed'
);
### Add parts (each "attach" has same arguments as "new"):
$msg->attach(Type =>'TEXT',
Data =>"Here's the GIF file you wanted"
);
$msg->attach(Type =>'image/gif',
Path =>'aaa000123.gif',
Filename =>'logo.gif'
);
$text = $msg->as_string;
MIME::Lite also includes a method for sending these things.
$msg->send;
This defaults to using sendmail but can be customized to use SMTP via Net::SMTP.
How do I read mail?
While you could use the Mail::Folder module from CPAN (part of the MailFolder package) or
the Mail::Internet module from CPAN (part of the MailTools package), often a module is
overkill. Here's a mail sorter.
#!/usr/bin/perl
my(@msgs, @sub);
my $msgno = -1;
$/ = ''; # paragraph reads
while (<>) {
if (/^From /m) {
/^Subject:\s*(?:Re:\s*)*(.*)/mi;
$sub[++$msgno] = lc($1) || '';
}
$msgs[$msgno] .= $_;
}
for my $i (sort { $sub[$a] cmp $sub[$b] || $a <=> $b } (0 .. $#msgs)) {
print $msgs[$i];
}
Or more succinctly,
#!/usr/bin/perl -n00
# bysub2 - awkish sort-by-subject
BEGIN { $msgno = -1 }
$sub[++$msgno] = (/^Subject:\s*(?:Re:\s*)*(.*)/mi)[0] if /^From/m;
$msg[$msgno] .= $_;
END { print @msg[ sort { $sub[$a] cmp $sub[$b] || $a <=> $b } (0 .. $#msg) ] }
How do I find out my hostname, domainname, or IP address?
gethostbyname, Socket, Net::Domain, Sys::Hostname" (contributed by brian d foy)
The Net::Domain module, which is part of the standard distribution starting in perl5.7.3,
can get you the fully qualified domain name (FQDN), the host name, or the domain name.
use Net::Domain qw(hostname hostfqdn hostdomain);
my $host = hostfqdn();
The "Sys::Hostname" module, included in the standard distribution since perl5.6, can also
get the hostname.
use Sys::Hostname;
$host = hostname();
To get the IP address, you can use the "gethostbyname" built-in function to turn the name
into a number. To turn that number into the dotted octet form (a.b.c.d) that most people
expect, use the "inet_ntoa" function from the <Socket> module, which also comes with perl.
use Socket;
my $address = inet_ntoa(
scalar gethostbyname( $host || 'localhost' )
);
How do I fetch a news article or the active newsgroups?
Use the Net::NNTP or News::NNTPClient modules, both available from CPAN. This can make
tasks like fetching the newsgroup list as simple as
perl -MNews::NNTPClient
-e 'print News::NNTPClient->new->list("newsgroups")'
How do I fetch/put an FTP file?
LWP::Simple (available from CPAN) can fetch but not put. Net::FTP (also available from
CPAN) is more complex but can put as well as fetch.
How can I do RPC in Perl?
(Contributed by brian d foy)
Use one of the RPC modules you can find on CPAN (
http://search.cpan.org/search?query=RPC&mode=all ).
REVISION
Revision: $Revision: 8539 $
Date: $Date: 2007-01-11 00:07:14 +0100 (Thu, 11 Jan 2007) $
See perlfaq for source control details and availability.
AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1997-2007 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and other authors as noted.
All rights reserved.
This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms
as Perl itself.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in this file are hereby placed into
the public domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code in your own programs
for fun or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit would be
courteous but is not required.
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